Unwritten Melody (copyright 2003)
I sat at the bar, kicking idly at the worn brass footrest anchored to the neighboring barstool. The one I sat on seemed to dig into my ass no matter which way I shifted, but the one I was kicking, hell, the entire line of them for that matter, really didn’t look any better. I hated bars. Never was one to leave my house all that much, but I’d been cooped up in the apartment the past couple weeks and decided to head to the bar I’d often pass on my way home from work. The longer I sat there, the more I remembered just why I never left my house. Stubbing my cigarette out, I gave the footrest one last halfassed kick and made to stand up when the door opened. The cigarette haze merged with the outside fog, silhouetting a slender figure in the frame before the head gave a little toss to clear the hair from the face.
Just to look at him was like a dream. His hair was a mass of burgundy tinted red that hung, shaggy, down to his chin. Subtle epicanthic folds that told that his eyes were made blue with the benefit of science, rimmed in smudged kohl that made them stand out like the eyes of some perpetually startled creature. Arms a tattooed litany of experiences committed to flesh. Slender chest and waist emphasized in deteriorating black silk open from lower chest to navel, exposing alabaster skin stretched taut across thin muscles. Draped across his hips was a skirt that couldn’t have looked better on any woman. The slit of the skirt showcased long, drawn-out legs wrapped in fishnet that terminated in four inch platform knee-high boots lined with buckles, a bizarre and violent end to the total ensemble.
I’d gone through so many different circles that it took a lot to jolt me, to make me do that quick little head shake we all do when something doesn’t quite fit into that perfect little mold of our existence. He made me do that. As he sat down at a table, the shadows seemed to move of their own accord to hover there. My eyes kept darting to the corner where he sat most of the night, nursing whatever it was he kept having the waitress bring. Between cigarettes, once, twice, maybe three times there’d be this half-instant of eye contact between us that seemed to burn straight through my retinas and lodge itself back in the primal section of my brain that ran on instinct. It made my gut tie up like butterflies on meth. I kept willing him to speak audibly so that I’d have a voice to match with the conversations we were holding inside my head, but my Jedi mind tricks never did seem to work when I needed them to.
The lights started cutting out one by one until only the bar lamp and this smoky halo of spotlights ringing the stage were lit. I made another quick glance in his direction but he wasn’t there, rather heading up the side stairs to the stage where he paused at the top to carry on some wordless conversation with someone there. A nod, quick wave of a pale hand. I noticed for the first time the short nails that seemed dipped in wet India ink. A second person darted across the stage, dressed like every other roadie slash bouncer I’d seen in my life, guitar in hand, only to press it into the waiting hand of this beautiful enigma that stood at the steps.
His slender hand wrapped the neck in a solid grip, hefting the guitar while the other slipped the strap over his head. The guitar was the same shade of red that one gets from pricking a finger on a needle. It hung low, an anchor of anticipation, a potential promise slung against his hips. Fingers ran along the strings, caressing them, plucking out soundless chords and progressions. I could openly stare now. He willingly made himself the focal point by walking out on stage and I took advantage of the opportunity, gaze shifting from him to the flowing lines of the guitar, following the delicate spirals along their crimson trails. The way he held it made it parent, lover, sacred relic.
There was a battered stool in the center of the stage, but he ignored it, standing at once soft and defiant, angry boots on legs splayed out to shoulder width as suddenly, from offstage, someone gave him the power. It was an infinite moment, mobius looped around his fingers as they hovered above the strings.
At last the hand of god reached down and brought forth the moment of creation where light divided from dark and something split, likewise, inside me. Not since I’d dropped acid had something hit me like that like a soft hand tipped with surgical steel claws, reaching through my insubstantial soul to grip at some physical core that somehow found itself lodged there. I felt him reach my hopelessness, my despair, my loneliness, and push them aside. The hope, acceptance, and contentment that I had buried seemed to reach up from inside me, forging a new path down which I could wander. The music poured in, a flow of birth, growth, and death... over and over. He had become god, and his guitar an altar at which I was to worship.
Like all the best drugs, his distorted time until I couldn’t be sure if I had been enthralled for mere moments, brief hours, or countless days. My cigarette had long gone to ash between my fingers and I couldn’t even remember at what point I had picked it up, much less attempted to smoke the damned thing. The lights came back up, spreading a glare of fluorescence that brought reality crashing back through to me. There was scattered applause, and I wasn’t sure if it was because the crowd hadn’t been the type for his music and they were just being polite or if he’d thrown the same unholy sorcery over all of us and like me, they were all too stunned to respond.
I sat, numb, right elbow pressed into the padded edge of the bar. My breath caught in my chest as I felt the tendrils of that undeniable experience slipping out of me. It withdrew in tiny waves, leaving me feeling like an abandoned, storm swept shore. With a slight tilt of his head, demure and enigmatic, he turned and headed backstage. Watching his back as he parted the smoky velvet and disappeared, I couldn’t explain why I felt like I’d just been kicked in the gut the instant he turned away.
I stubbed my smoke out in the ashtray even though it was a pointless gesture, a habit ingrained from over a decade of lighting up. As undeniably filled as I’d felt a moment earlier, I now just wanted to leave. I didn’t even want to talk myself into hanging around on the off chance he’d come out from the back. I just felt sick and lonely and the smoke of the bar seemed to coat my skin, making me feel grimy and dirty. I shrugged my coat up onto my shoulders and slipped off the vinyl barstool, threading my path carefully between tables. Some disgusting sliver of hope forced my head to turn at the doorway but the stage was empty and nowhere behind me was that darkly angelic presence I wanted to find.
Pissed at myself for turning around I nearly hit my shoulder on the doorframe in my haste to exit. Satin soft mist was falling, slicking the concrete and tamping down the smell of exhaust that never seemed to leave the curbside at any other time. I breathed deep, trying to shake the unease that had settled over me. Reaching down into my pocket, I fumbled for a cigarette and tried to light it, watching the fine rain lay gray spots across the perfectly white paper. I heard the sound of someone striking a match and then a flame glowed orange in my vision, cupped inside a hand and belonging to a person I hadn’t noticed thirty seconds before. Nodding my thanks I took a drag, the first paper hit making a small ring of ash that floated down as I exhaled.
“Don’t worry about it,” a voice came, surprisingly soft and with an odd cadence that I couldn’t place. “That, it happens sometimes.”
“Cheap matches never do all that good in bad weather,” I agreed.
“No, no, I meant the music.”
I looked over, my gaze still anchored to the ground and my line of sight collided with the four-inch soles of a pair of black leather boots. Slowly, my eyes over each silver buckle to the intricate spider web of fishnet and kept going up of their own accord. As I looked up I could see his lips moving but the roar in my ears was so loud all I could do was watch them speak.
I couldn’t make eye contact, fearing that that I’d be struck blind as well as deaf.
“I’m sorry,” I stumbled, “What was that?”
“Are you okay?” He sounded concerned but why he’d be concerned I couldn’t fucking figure. All I knew is that I was standing here and he was standing there and I was fairly certain that I’d be waking up with my skull cracked open in some alleyway because this was the surely the stuff of hallucinations.
“Oh, yeah, yeah.” I was going for nonchalant and quite certain I was falling somewhere in a range destined for extinction in some sort of twisted emotional Darwinism. “You’re damned good, you know.”
Half-lidded eyes glanced down at the pavement and came back up, shocking me with an unassuming look. “I can’t take all the credit. I only play it.”
“I’ve never heard anything like it, like that. You didn’t write it?”
He shook his head, bangs falling down into his eyes only to get swept back by a hand. “No, but you know who did.” It wasn’t a question, as it should have been. It was a statement and that puzzled me.
“Who?” I asked, genuinely curious.
He just smiled, corners of those slick crimson lips turned up as the slick tip of his tongue darted out and ran across his bottom lip. His eyes caught mine unaware and I felt that heat again, searing through me. It seeded in my gut, grew up my spine, laid roots across my shoulders, and came to flower in my mind.
“You did.”
I took an uneasy step back, my heel hitting odd and threatening to go out from under me until I regained my footing.
“Rather, I should say I drew it out of you. It was there, inside you.” He shrugged a little, as if it was a normal thing. “Come, don’t look at me like that. I don’t manage to make it sound right when I explain it. Now you look frightened and I didn’t mean to do it like that. Come over here and sit down, you look like you’ve no balance right now.”
I managed to make it to a dilapidated bus bench, worn advertisement on the back touting a pawnshop that had burned down a year and a half ago. He sat, facing me, one leg crossed casually over the other, foot somehow tapping gently in those impossible boots. I pressed my fingers to my right temple, for once thankful of the poor circulation that smoking brings. My fingertips felt cool against the flesh and it helped to ebb out some of the dizzy swimming sensation that crowded my head.
“What do you mean?” I asked once I found my voice. It came out small and weak and not at all like my voice usually sounded to my ears.
“It is as I said, not simple to tell. But... it is similar to this... Each person is music to play. Some, the melody is simple like a child sitting at the keys for the first time. They are tentative, hesitant, and insecure. Most are like radio songs. They may need different instruments or have a different voice but really it is only the same music because they conform and cannot make their own sound. There are those who are so shattered and unbalanced that to play them is like running a hand aimlessly across the strings. It makes noise that isn’t pleasant to anyone.” He lifted his hand, palms up, and gestured to the side. “Do you see what I mean?”
I knew there were deep lines etched between my brows because while what he was saying about people made sense, and relating people to music made sense, but there was absolutely no sense to be made when I thought about him somehow reading people and essentially playing what was written on their souls.
He sighed and gave a helpless shrug. “This language, for me it is imperfect. I don’t express it well it seems. I do much better to speak when I play. In music there is no misunderstanding. It simply is what it is. What I am saying is that inside you is music worth playing. You surrender to it so totally, give it such freedom within you. Inside you were not black and white, but gray of infinite shades.”
I ran my hand across my lips, searching for something to say. Behind us an older woman passed, her eyes downcast. One wrinkled hand, joints gnarled like knobby branches, tightly gripped the plastic handle of an umbrella. I watched her pass, following her with my eyes. “What about her?” I asked. “Can you see inside her?”
“She is tired. Her melody is closing. She was bright in her past, but now, for her, is the time of final refrain. The music is no longer alive inside her. It has been played out long ago.” His gaze fell to his hands, as if reading such things gave him great sorrow. “But surely, you knew that when you asked, did you not?”
“She’s old. What else is there to life when you know it’s coming to an end?”
“You know better than that. Life is not measured by span, but by living what you’re given. Honestly, you’ve buried it so deep inside you it’s no wonder you can’t feel it much anymore...” He lit a cigarette and took a drag, blowing smoke in my direction. It smelled faintly sweet and a bit like incense. Cloves, probably.
I fidgeted with the button on my jacket, debating on if I should keep eye contact, drop eye contact, say something, stay quiet... I felt out of my depth and I hated that feeling. Like he was educating a child, a teacher full of infinite patience, he reached over and tilted my chin up, lifting my gaze to match his. I felt that burning again, as I had when we caught eyes in the bar. “That feeling,” he said simply. “The ability to recognize people for what they really are, if you choose not to blind yourself to it. With you it was not music. What was it?” He examined me closely, as if I surely bore some stamp of whatever it is he was looking for. “Oh!” he exclaimed. “I should have realized. Those are the ones who are affected the most. You have the hardest time shutting it out, souls like that.”
“What?” I asked. Obviously he had found what he wanted to know, but it seemed that he now knew me better than I did. I grew childishly irritated, a scowl threatening to join the glare I could feel rising in my eyes.
“Healers. You are like gateways through which others pass. They come to you broken or you find them as such. You cannot let them be. Once they are healed though, they continue their journey, free to walk their own road without your assistance. So much, you take their pain as your own but you cannot heal yourself. They leave you with their scars and never even know.” He smiled sadly, eyes sympathetic. He brushed the side of my face with his hand, fingertip tracing my cheek.
I could feel the edge of his nail against my skin and it felt so good, so solid, so human. I sighed, the touch of his hand brushing up against that wall I had built inside me. I felt it tremble, wavering in the aftershocks of the night’s experiences. How he knew these things, I didn’t understand. I thought back to the string of people in my life that had come and gone. Those I had once cherished as dearest friends no longer spoke to me, no longer visited. I had grown so weary of it all that I had shut myself up into a solitary existence. It wasn’t a happy existence, but it was so much better than the alternative. To care was to hurt when they left. To love was to die when they walked out. True, I no longer felt, but I no longer cried silently at night, cursing my own weakness.
My hand came up of its own volition and pushed his aside. “Don’t do that,” I whispered fiercely.
“I am sorry. I didn’t mean to. It was just...” He shook his head, his hair falling down across his eyes, hiding what may have shown there. “I am too careless with you, I think. Too open. You do not trust openness anymore. The healer needs healing.”
I hadn’t wanted any of this when I had walked into the bar tonight. I hadn’t wanted my world disrupted, my security threatened, my facade of peace shattered. I wanted to walk away. I wanted this stranger to go back to being what he had been when he walked in the bar - eye candy, and nothing more. I wanted it to be about pure physical contact but he kept drilling down my emotional defense down into the places I didn’t even let myself go anymore. I hated him for it. Just because he could see it didn’t give him the right to exploit it. It didn’t give him the right to try to fix the damaged goods. After years and years I had finally been able to find a way of living that kept me sane and now it was being challenged, torn at, bit by goddamned bit.
“Just stop it,” I said. “Don’t you understand I don’t want to go back to that way of life? I don’t want to be a gateway for other people’s sorrow! I don’t want to hurt like that again. You don’t know what it’s like.”
He sighed heavily. “I do understand, more than you believe I do. When I play, I cannot be detached from what I see. When I came in tonight, I did not expect much. It was just a gig, as they say. When you caught my eye, though, it hit me the same way it hit you. For me to play what I see in a person is not a passive thing. In order to understand someone so completely, I cannot ignore what is there. I cannot play it if I cannot feel it. I cannot feel it unless I understand it. I cannot understand it unless I have lived it. I have lived life. It has not always been a simple life, it has not always been a short life, but it has always been my life.”
My eyes stung with years of unshed tears. My stubborn determination warred with my need to be able to open to someone after so very long. I felt one tear spill down my cheek, tasted the salty heat on my lips, followed by another. I shut my eyes tightly but my tears refused to stay sealed within. I felt his thumb cross my cheek, felt his fingers against my chin. I opened my eyes and starred at him through the translucent filter of tears. The streetlight gave him a soft aura in the haze. His hand slipped from my cheek and he stood up. I looked up at him, my heart a violent pain that threatened to crush my lungs and steal my breath. Holding out one of those delicate white hands, he stood patiently.
“What is it?” I whispered.
“Come. I will show you the music if you show me how to heal.” He stood there, infinitely patient, expression open and calm.
Teach him to heal... me? Time stretched out again, indefinable notes hovering around us, ghosts of music yet to be written. I looked into his eyes and as I took his hand I heard his music play.